rites; when around him the airy legions gathered from the populous
elements, the spirits he ruled and the spirits he bowed down before:
fleeting nebulous things white as foam coming forth from the great
deep who fled away at the waving of his hand; and rarer the great
sons of fire, bright and transparent as glass, who though near
seemed yet far away and were still and swift as the figures that
glance in a crystal. So the child grew up full of mystery; her
thoughts were not the thoughts of the people about her, nor their
affections her affections. It seemed as if the elf-things or beings
carved by the thought of the magician, pushed aside by his strong
will and falling away from him, entering into the child became
part of her, linking her to the elemental beings who live in the
star-soul that glows within the earth. Her father told her such
things as she asked, but he died while she was yet young and she
knew not his aim, what man is, or what is his destiny; but she
knew the ways of every order of spirit that goes about clad in a
form, how some were to be dreaded and some to be loved; By reason
of this knowledge she succeeded as priestess to the shrine, and
held the sway of beauty and youth, of wisdom and mystery over the
people dwelling in the woods.

It was the evening of the autumn festival, the open grassy space
before the altar was crowded with figures, hunters with their
feathered heads; shepherds, those who toil in the fields, the old
and hoary were gathered around.

The young priestess stood up before them; she was pale from vigil,
and the sunlight coming through the misty evening air fell upon her
swaying arms and her dress with its curious embroidery of peacock's
feathers; the dark hollows of her eyes were alight and as she spoke